Beyond ATC · Railway

A route knowledge card instead of a rating, but the same currency rule

SkyRoster has never rostered a train crew. Everything on this page is a mapping exercise against the product's own architecture, stated here in the open, not a description of a deployment. Railway is also the sector on this site with the clearest gap: its demand does not come from a fixed shift pattern at all, it comes from a working timetable, and that is a different demand-generation problem from anything SkyRoster solves today.

The scheduling problem

What crew diagramming actually has to hold

Coverage shape

A crew diagram is built around scheduled train paths, so a duty's start, end and length come from a timetable rather than a fixed shift template.

Qualifications

Route knowledge and traction, the rolling stock type a driver is certified on, each scoped to a specific line or fleet, plus a periodic medical fitness check for a safety-critical role.

Statutory rest

Driving-hours and rest rules for train crew are broadly similar in shape to aviation's: a cap on continuous driving time and a mandated rest between duties. Specific limits differ by country and are not stated here.

Demand pattern

A cancelled or delayed service does not remove the demand. It displaces the crew who were diagrammed against it, cascading through the rest of the day the way an understaffed ATC shift cascades into overtime.

What maps directly

Mechanisms already built for a different name

Every item below is an illustrative mapping against SkyRoster's existing data model.modelled None of it has been configured for a railway operator, and none of it has been proven on a real diagram.

Route currency as a use-it-or-lose-it rule

Route knowledge lapses if a driver has not worked a line recently, the literal shape of the currency rule the competency module already runs for an ATC rating that requires recent hours to stay current. See /platform/competency.

Depot-scoped qualifications

A qualification valid at one depot and not another maps cleanly onto a qualification already scoped to specific units, rather than valid across an entire organisation by default. See /platform/competency.

Crew required per scheduled service

How many crew, with which traction competence, on which service, is the same headcount-by-time-by-place table sector planning already builds for airspace and working positions. See /platform/sector-planning.

Turn swapping, re-verified

A driver trading a turn with a colleague would need the same automatic check a controller's swap already gets: route and traction current, rest intact, and an approval chain a heavily unionised workforce expects to be followed exactly, not assumed. See /platform/shift-swaps.

A driver diagrammed against a route they have not worked in months

modelled

The shape: A driver, certified on a line under a use-it-or-lose-it currency rule, has not actually worked that route in several months when a new diagram is being built.
What it shows: The same currency logic that already tracks an ATC controller's recent hours on a qualification would flag that driver as no longer current for the route before the diagram is finalised, rather than after a supervisor happens to notice.
What it does not show: It does not model the harder problem underneath it, generating the duty itself from a timetable. It only models the currency check that would sit on top of a duty once one exists.

What would need new rules or new work

Where the honest answer is development, not a settings screen

Timetable-driven demand generation

Today's demand model, a sector configuration, a manpower requirement, is built by an administrator ahead of time. A duty whose start, end and length are derived from train paths that change with the working timetable needs a different demand-generation layer entirely, not a new rule on the existing one. This is the largest gap of the four sectors on this site.

Driving-hours-specific rest arithmetic

The exact formula for continuous driving time and mandated rest is a different calculation from ATC's, and would need its own rule design rather than a threshold change on an existing one.

Real-time disruption re-crewing

Cascading a delay into a same-day crew replan needs a live train-running feed, an integration this product does not have.

The engine

How the engine decides

Construction, local search, hard and soft rules. The mechanism this whole page assumes.

Platform

Competency management

Requirements underneath qualifications, and the currency rules that expire on their own.

Beyond ATC

The other three sectors

Airport ground operations, healthcare, and fire and rescue, read the same way.

Bring your diagramming rules, not just your headcount.

A working session with your own route structure, traction fleet and currency rules shows exactly which of this page's mappings hold, and which of the open questions above would actually need building first.

Book a working session Send a question instead